Rate the Song: Native Son

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Native Son


  • Total voters
    38
  • Poll closed .

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ONE love, blood, life
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This is the second-to-last round of the 2012 rate the song series! Today, we shall be voting on the second round of 2000s non-album songs. The full list of these songs is:

Stateless
Summer Rain
Always
Levitate
Love You Like Mad
Smile
Flower Child
Big Girls Are Best
Electrical Storm
The Hands That Built America
Native Son
Xanax and Wine
Are You Gonna Wait Forever?
Window in the Skies
Soon
Winter
Mercy

Today's round will cover the second set of six songs, from Flower Child to Xanax and Wine.

Please rate Native Son on a scale from 0 to 10, using whatever criteria you feel allows you to best evaluate the song as a whole. I will not set criteria for people to based on, but if you feel like your best evaluation of the merits of a song comes from voting only based on, say, the studio version, go right ahead and vote that way. Full information on the Rate The Song series may be found in this thread.

Have fun! This poll will close in 96 hours.
 
9. Great song, good lyrics and bonus Edge vocals! I can fully understand why they decided not to put this on the album and go with Vertigo though. It's a great song, but I doubt it would've been the hit Vertigo was. And live it would be much less of an impact.
 
Good but not better than Vertigo. I think some people might like it more because they have heard vertigo so many times its refreshing for an alternate.
 
Since there's a pretty good chance that a decent number of posts in this thread are inevitably going to say something along the lines of "It's good, but not better than Vertigo", I'll just say this is a 7 and Vertigo an 8 and leave it at that.

Oh, and Leonard Peltier is guilty.
 
IMO, better than Vertigo. Especially because Vertigo doesn't have a bridge like Native Son does. "Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!". There's also more guitars and interesting guitar work in this song that makes Vertigo seem bland to me. 9. Fuckin' great tune.
 
They made the right choice in making this into Vertigo, but this song is still pretty great. That "FREEEEEEEE" bit is fantastic.
 
The production is way better and more interesting on this one. The mixing on HTDAAB overall can be quite painful, here it's more comfortable. I do like the verses and the lyrics better on Vertigo, and commercially it was a good thing to change it, but I do think this is slightly better.

The bridge is absolutely amazing. The guitars, the clapping, the vocals... :drool: 8.
 
This was a great start for this song and it is a very strong version. I times I really like this version, though I am glad it ended up turning into Vertigo. 8.
 
Great song, though Vertigo is better by a mile. If Native Son was released, it wouldn't have been a huge hit, in my opinion. Still great. 7
 
It's funny how time changes things. Back when Unreleased & Rare came out and we were all bored with/resentful towards Vertigo, NS would have been somewhere well into the 8s.

Personally, I've never thought this was anything remarkable, outside of the FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE portion. 7.
 
So much better than Vertigo it's ridiculous. Put it this way: per last.fm, I've listened to Native Son 14 times in the last three years, while Vertigo can muster just one meagre play.
 
I think they probably made the right choice with Vertigo, as a lead single it was a masterstroke, but that's a bit unfair on Native Son, which does have more depth and would have worked extremely well as an album track. Only one of the songs could live though and I do feel they made the right choice.
8
 
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